


Measure for Measure

by c3mf, Linguini



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anger, Angst, Arthur Shappey is a wonderful human being, Carolyn is in charge, Douglas Richardson is a heartbreaking idiot, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c3mf/pseuds/c3mf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/pseuds/Linguini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."  The story of Douglas Richardson, his demons, and friends in the least expected places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Measure for Measure

Douglas has been gone from Air England for nearly eight months and estranged from his wife for nearly three when he runs across MJN. He does the barest of research and what he discovers about them doesn’t impress him in the least. The only reason he even considers gracing them with his CV is the swiftly-dwindling balance of his savings and the increasingly empty state of the drinks cupboard.  
  
His initial interview is a formality at best. The owner is a shrewdly calculating shark of a woman, fresh off a divorce of her own and still deliciously bitter over it. Negotiations aren’t more than haggling over his pay scale. He intends to take no less than what he made at Air England. She refuses to give more than the median price for a FO’s salary.  
  
“First Officer?” He only just manages to keep the indignant fury from his voice. “Captain, I think you mean. After all, I spent a considerable number of years as one, as I’m sure you’re aware as you’ve no doubt gone over my credentials meticulously.”  
  
“Indeed I have,” she says. “With a fine-tooth comb, in fact. Over the course of which I discovered that during your considerable captaincy you spent a good number of those years engaged in smuggling, for which you were ultimately terminated from Air England.” She smiles, a quick, predatory flash of teeth. “Have I missed anything?”  
  
He says nothing, stunned into an affronted and uneasy silence.  
  
Briskly, she continues, folding her hands atop her desk. “Let’s get not dance around the issue at hand, shall we? I need another pilot so I can meet the CAA’s god-awful regulations and get in the air. You need somewhere to fly, somewhere that’s willing to overlook the finer details of your career. As it stands, I’m sure we can come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement, don’t you?”  
  
An hour later, he leaves with a signed contract and a re-instated title as First Officer. He knows he should find some satisfaction at bartering for a higher price but, the victory rings hollow. By ceding to compromise, he can’t help but feel he’s set a precedent for a power struggle in his employment.  
  
 _Ah well_ , he thinks. _At least I’ll never be bored_.  
  
~*~  
  
The first time he steals the Talisker, it’s purely an act of petulance against Carolyn for making him have to toady to that ridiculous stuffed shirt of a man.  He’ll never admit it, but it probably isn’t one of his better thought-out plans, given how he spends the entire night watching the streetlight play off the cut-glass tumbler as he fills and empties it by turns.  
  
Because really, what else does he have? His career is gone, his marriage is in shambles—only a fool would think that it will end in anything other than divorce (except, for possibly, murder). He has been many things in his life (a liar, a thief, a seducer), but never a fool. Why bother with the struggle when there’s nothing left to fight for?  
  
He’s perfectly capable of going through the motions of living whilst he’s blind-drunk, he knows that. The choice is simple. The only thing standing between him and blissful oblivion is one lone bottle of Talisker.  
  
It doesn’t put up much of a fight.  
  
~*~  
  
Carolyn’s not fooled when he comes in the next morning. He’s very practiced, so he knows to the drop how much he can drink and still be sober enough to not get caught by the CAA. But it’s not enough for the eagle eyes of his employer.  
  
When he drinks, he’s able to chase away the cacophony of voices shouting in disapproval--his employers’, his wives’, his own. He prepares himself to deal with the inevitable onslaught of fury from Carolyn when she catches on. What’s he’s woefully unprepared for, however, is the disappointment in the set of her shoulders when she catches sight of him. It’s a full six weeks before she calls him anything other than _Mr. Richardson_. Not pilot, or driver, or even idiot. Just a frigidly impersonal acknowledgement without a trace of emotion in her eyes.  
  
It hurts more than he expected.  
  
~*~  
  
He drinks what is left the Talisker to make himself forget the frosty detachment in Carolyn’s voice.  
  
He loses hours instead, and the icy disapproval lingers.  
  
Douglas knows exactly what kind of man he is, exactly the kind of failure he is capable of, and knows above all else, that he is proving every unkind thing said and done against him true. He can’t find it in himself to bother with denial.  
  
Arthur is the only thing that keeps coming into work from being a chore, if only because Arthur is incapable of shunning anyone, even when all good sense should dictate otherwise. Some part of Douglas cringes away from the boy’s single-minded focus, because when all is said and done, admiration showered on an addict is admiration abused and wasted. It would be cruel to lead him on, let him get attached, let him believe that Douglas is anything more than a smarmy git who, when given enough incentive, can be devastatingly clever.  
  
 _But that’s the thing about addict_ s, he thinks, even as another string of lies leave his mouth. _We’re fucking selfish_.  
  
He takes every scrap of devotion Arthur is willing to give him and dutifully plays his part.  
  
 _Maybe one day, I won’t need to. But not today_.  
  
~*~  
  
Before he knows it, a year passes, leaving nothing to show for itself but the hollow clatter of empty bottles and cans when he takes out the rubbish. He tells himself that the gauntness he sees in the mirror is his new slim, trim figure, that the lines around his eyes are a sign of maturity, that the way even Arthur’s started to look at him warily is proof he’s teaching the young man how to be an adult. It’s impossible, unthinkable to admit to himself how far he’s fallen.  
  
Then his second Birling Day comes, bringing with it the standard smug condescension from the old goat himself. That, coupled with Carolyn’s clear confidence that she’ll keep the bottle of whiskey, stokes a fire in him he hasn’t felt for ages. It’s an unhealthy raging of his ego, stung by his failure and desperate for a taste of success in any form.  
  
The truth is Douglas is excellent at many things, chief among them addiction. He’s addicted to the alcohol, quite clearly, but just as seductive is the rush of getting away with something--the bigger the deceit, the better. Luckily, Birling Day combines his two greatest vices into one tantalizing Siren’s call—meant for Douglas’s ears alone.  
  
He’s never been able to weather temptation even when he wanted to. There’s no help on Earth for him now when he doesn’t.  
  
~*~  
  
It’s simply a matter of swapping labels. Child’s play, really. Were the idea it to come from anyone else he would say it was laughably cliche—but the idea is his and he intends to give himself all due credit.  
  
Birling drowns himself in cheap, rotgut whiskey from the drinks cupboard and by the end of the flight is a thorough, slurring mess. No one is the wiser and Douglas leaves for home with another bottle of Talisker safely stowed away in his flight bag, triumphant and vainglorious. He recognizes the gratification he feels for what it is—spite and petulance. Knowing doesn’t stop him from reveling in it for a second.  
  
He sits the Talisker in the exact middle of the coffee table in his sitting room like a trophy and tells himself Carolyn got everything she deserved, that he simply tipped the scales back in his favor and set everything to rights.  
  
The thing about balance, though, is that it is precariously fickle. It requires precision and delicacy. Most of all, it requires temperance.  
  
The high of success wanes like any other and leaves him desperate and sinking. He reaches for the only thing he has left to cling to.  
  
 _Just a glass_ , he thinks. _To celebrate my victory_. After all, it’s no less than precisely what he deserves.  
  
He never stops to consider he might deserve better.  
  
The burn of the first glass hits his throat in that painfully familiar way, dulling the ache in his chest long enough for him to forget why he ever tried to stop in the first place. He’s not a pretty drunk, not happy and friendly—never has been. Nor is he maudlin like some hard-boiled detective in a film noir. Instead, a drunk Douglas is a coolly calculating Douglas. When he drinks, his hands are never steadier, his eye never keener, wits never sharper.  
  
He sees his life for the scattered embers of once-promising hopes it is. He faces the dawn stoically, draining somewhere between his second and his seventh glass with a neat flick of his wrist.  
  
He is _exactly_ as drunk as he intends to be—enough to ensure his sleep will be complete, if not restful.  He has no obligations at the airfield the next day—no one expecting him to fly a plane, to solve their problems, to fix _every damn thing_ that goes wrong, as if his hands don’t shake when he’s been without too long.  As if he’s nothing more than a magician at a child’s party.  This is what his life is now, bouncing from one godforsaken place to the next, living on a shoestring budget that’s barely enough to cover two maintenance payments, let alone basic living expenses.  
  
Douglas finishes the Talisker and stumbles around the house, mixing the dregs of whatever bottles he finds into disgustingly appealing cocktails, scoffing at the ruins of his once-perfect life and bristling at the looming prospect of an inescapable drunken future. Fuck the naysayers. There’s obviously nothing wrong with him. He’s fine, perfectly functioning, still enormously capable.  
  
Then he remembers his weekend with his daughter starts in the morning.  
  
It’s the rubber duck sitting on the lip of the tub, of all things, that jogs his memory when he staggers into the loo trying to figure out if the lurching of his stomach is just vertigo or if he really is going to be spectacularly sick. By then, it isn’t a stretch to throw himself into a cold and quickly sobering shower. At least if he is sick, he thinks as he shivers, there won’t be any mess to clean up.  
  
The mess in the rest of the flat is another matter altogether.  
  
He plies himself with water and paracetamol and gets rid of anything that could be even remotely considered damning. It’s easy to hide the evidence once he remembers how.  
  
When he’s done, there isn’t a trace left of anything untoward except himself, but it’s nothing that can’t be taken care of with a little mouthwash and a convincing explanation about feeling under the weather. He won’t even have to lie about it.  
  
He slumps down on the sofa and vows this will be the last time. ( _You’ve said that before_ , a voice chides somewhere in a dim and dusty corner of his mind, dripping condescension. _Now look where you are_.)  
  
When he closes his eyes, he convinces himself it’s because he’s exhausted. It doesn’t have anything at all to do with keeping the room from spinning.  
  
 _This time will be different. It has to be._  
  
The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.  
  
~*~  
  
The visit goes about as well as could be expected. That is to say, absolutely horrendously. His ex-wife is more than a little reluctant to leave their daughter with him while Douglas is in such a state. He’s reduced to the closest to begging he’s ever been in his life. It works, but at the cost of whatever little bargaining power he had left between them.  
  
There’s not much he’s up to doing the first day, lost as he is under the suffocating nausea followed by the blistering headache. He doesn’t even manage to cook for them, leaving her to fend for herself while he retreats to alternate between the darkness of the bedroom and the coolness of the tile on the bathroom walls.  
  
As terrible as that is, the second day is worse. The nausea dissipates sometime in the night, but the headache remains, crippling in its intensity. But he’d promised a trip to the zoo, and if there’s one area in his life he can be relied on, it’s the small promises he makes to his daughter. Not the big ones, mind you--the ones he’s made in his head a million times before about controlling his drinking (he can’t), or being a father she can be proud of (he isn’t), or of always being there for her (he won’t). But he’s never fallen through on a zoo trip, and he supposes (hopes) that counts for something.  
  
  
It doesn’t—not to anyone, least of all his daughter. He’s more concerned with finding shade to stand under than listening to her talk about the animals or her future career in zoology, and she eventually falls silent for the rest of the trip, moving listlessly between exhibits. He doesn’t notice.  
  
What he does notice is the look her mother gives him when she arrives that night for the handoff.  He’d thought he’d had her fooled the day before with his stories of dodgy food in Kathmandu, but she’s well familiar with the signs of a Douglas in the throes of a hangover and informs him in no uncertain terms that this trip had been a goodbye. Without another word, she stalks in righteous anger back to the car, leaving him standing on the pavement, watching as her taillights turn the corner.  
  
He goes back in, slumping heavily against the front door.  Eventually, his legs give way and he slides to the floor, arms tucked between his stomach and his thighs and forehead on his knees. Despite everything, he doesn’t cry--there’s not a drop of moisture left in his body. There’s nothing left. Just this hollowness where his heart once was and the accusing voices clamoring in the back of his mind.  
  
The ever-present urge to drink becomes overwhelming.  
  
The only thing that keeps him from digging through the rubbish bins is the fact that he has to be at the airfield at 6 a.m. and he’s sober enough now for the tattered remains of his dignity to chafe at the thought of stooping to the mindless desperation of some back alley inebriate itching for a fix. (He doesn’t consider for a moment that the chafing has more to do with the memory of that desperation than the idea of it.)  
  
It doesn’t take long for the hollowness to melt into despondency, for the despondency to flare into a rage which he loses himself to, stoking it until he’s bursting with the grief and the misery of it. Placing the blame is easy then and he slips into the role of the martyr like a second skin.  
  
Turning his flat upside down isn’t a tantrum, it’s relief found in hopelessness. He sits among the wreckage for hours, amidst the shattered glass and the overturned furniture. He leaves the whiskey dripping down the walls as a reminder of every injustice he’s ever suffered.  
  
It’s unfair, the entire world. Every person he meets conspires to unravel every last thread of his life and then leaves him to stitch up the tattered scraps. His career, his marriage, his daughter… all gone because someone somewhere at any given time has it out for him and he is so fucking _tired_ of it, sick and seething from it.  
  
It’s for the best, he supposes. There’s something rather motivating about bitterness, vindication found in aggression and spite. None of it is becoming in the least, but what other choice does he have? The world drove him to this, so it’s only right the world suffers right along with him.  
  
He retreats to the oppressive emptiness of his bedroom and lets the darkness smother him into an uneasy sleep. The fury remains even in his dreams.  
  
~*~  
  
He leaves the mess in his flat for a full two weeks, stepping over books with broken spines and shards of glass. It represents his mental state so painfully well that just the thought of cleaning it leaves him ill and shaking with rage. He sleeps very little and eats even less, subsisting almost entirely on liquid calories and the cheese tray. No one at MJN speaks to him, except when absolutely necessary. Not that he cares. Easily forgotten, this two-bit tin pot operation and its band of misfits. Quite easily.  
  
He tries to forget them. God help him, how he tries. He does everything he can to isolate himself from the rest of MJN. He yells at Arthur, refuses to bite on any of Carolyn’s wit and is thoroughly nasty to James on the flightdeck. James falls for it, becoming more and more pedantic as the days go by until finally he refuses to address Douglas as anything other than “First Officer Richardson” or play any games.  
  
But the Shappeys. The Shappeys are a different story, pulling Douglas closer and closer to them the darker his mood gets. Carolyn blackmails him into cooking dinner for them at her house, and Arthur spends the evening regaling them with animal facts and trivia over a hearty pasta dish.  Through no fault of his own, his attempts to drag Douglas into a lighter mood fail, as every story he tells is another reminder of that devastating trip to the zoo. Eventually, Douglas can take no more, and makes his barely-civil goodbyes.  
  
~*~  
  
Eventually, Carolyn’s standoffish attempts at camaraderie and Arthur’s overly-enthusiastic need to include him in every mundane event in MJN’s schedule prove to be too much, and Douglas fobs off work for the solitary sanctity of his broken flat. He phones in early, before he knows either of them will be up, and makes certain the message he leaves on the answerphone is thoroughly wretched and convincingly sick. It’s only a short-haul to Marseilles that James can more than manage on his own, so there should be no reason for Carolyn to bother wasting her time trying to blackmail him into to coming in.  
  
He shuts off his phone, turns off the bedside alarm, and lies in bed, listless and wrung out. He can only be expected to put up with so much idiocy, before all the sniping and posturing begins to take its toll. Despite the instant gratification of confrontation with another willing party, he forgets how depleting maintaining the conflict actually is.  
  
All he needs is silence and sleep.  
  
He gets neither.  
  
The drapes are pulled shut so his bedroom is hazed with greying daytime shadows, dark enough to let him believe that there is nothing else beyond the walls of his flat. He buries himself in his duvet, lying face down on his pillows, and vaguely wonders as he drifts if it’s possible to smother himself in his sleep. He decides even if it is, he doesn’t have the energy or the inclination to move.  
  
He isn’t certain how long he lies there—minutes, hours. None of it would matter to him, except someone is pounding rhythmically at his front door. Groggily, he rouses himself enough to prop himself up on one elbow and bellow, “Go away!” before collapsing back onto the linens.  
  
He’s just beginning to float into the bleary divide between the waking world and unconsciousness, when the pounding starts again, this time louder and even more frantic.  
  
For a moment he lies there and fumes. Then he hurtles himself out of bed and stalks down the hall with the sole intention of throttling whoever is stupid enough to be on his doorstep. He throws the door open, ready to tear into an unsuspecting stranger, but the words die on his tongue the instant he sees Arthur, fist still raised mid-knock.  
  
“Oh, good,” Arthur says, with obvious relief. “I was worried maybe you weren’t in.”  
  
For half a minute, Douglas can only stare. There are a hundred things he could ask, and a hundred answers Arthur could give, so he decides to go with the most pressing of them. “Why are you here, Arthur?”  
  
The smile Arthur gives him is positively blinding. “You phoned this morning and said you were sick. I’m checking up on you.”  
  
Before Douglas can even think to close the door on him, Arthur breezes past him into the sitting room and freezes when he spots the damage. For a long moment, neither of them say a word—Arthur captivated by the disarray and Douglas at a loss to think how exactly he can usher Arthur out without any of this making its way back to Carolyn.  
  
He’s just about to spin a convincing tale about a nonexistent house pet and a night suffering through delirium, when Arthur stoops to pick up a broken hardcover of _The Hobbit_ and carefully place it back on the mostly empty bookshelf. Another book follows, and then another, Arthur scooping the remains into his arms and setting them where they belong like each one is made of glass.  
  
“You should have phoned last night,” Arthur says, methodically filling in the shelves. “I would have come sooner. It’s terrible taking care of yourself when you’re sick. Why don’t you have a rest? I can sort this.”  
  
 _No one can sort this_ , Douglas wants to tell him. _This isn’t something that can be fixed, least of all by you._  
  
But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead he stares at the shattered photo of his daughter lying on the carpet by his feet. Gingerly, he picks it up and replaces it on the mantle, focusing on his daughter’s fractured smile. For a long drawn-out moment, Arthur watches him, then without a word, goes back to reshelving.  
  
They don’t speak. The silence is the closest Douglas lets himself come to mourning.  
  
There’s nothing miraculous about Arthur Shappey.  He doesn’t relieve Douglas of any physical burden, doesn’t ease the pain, has no platitudes or panacea to give.  But he is steady, and genuine, and _there_.  He believes in the power of Douglas Richardson like no else—not even his own daughter—has done in ages. Or ever.  
  
When the cleaning and sorting is finished, Arthur insists that Douglas rest on the sofa while he reheats some of the soup Carolyn sent with him.  Douglas complies with a roll of his eyes and a put-upon sigh.  In truth, while his illness to shirk work was completely fabricated, he’s not feeling at all well at the moment.  His stomach’s a bit queasy, the headache that threatened in the bedroom before has blossomed into a full-blown migraine, and every bit of bone and sinew in his body aches dully.  The curtains in the sitting room are wide open, a product of Arthur’s unholy affair with sunshine and Douglas is forced to throw his arm over his eyes to block it out.  
  
He stews there in silence, listening to Arthur bang dishes around in his kitchen, pondering what his life’s become if he’s relying on the manchild to care for him.  Eventually the noise ceases and he counts four seconds of blessed silence before Arthur comes in again, setting the bowl gently on the coffee table.  
  
“Douglas,” he asks hesitantly.  “Do you want to eat something?  Might make you feel better.  I know it does me, even if I really, really don’t want to and Mum has to make me.”  
  
Douglas grunts noncommittally, waving the hand attached to the arm over his eyes half-heartedly in Arthur’s direction.  There’s a moment of assessing silence, then the feel of warm fingers wrapped around his wrist.  
  
“How did you do this?” Arthur asks softly.  
  
Douglas has no idea what he’s talking about, snatching his hand back from Arthur’s examination.  There’s a neat gash starting at the base of his thumb and running across his palm. Douglas gazes at it curiously. It should hurt, shouldn’t it, this bleeding wound.  And yet… And yet.  
  
“Must have nicked myself cleaning,” Douglas finally says. The explanation seems weak even to his own ears, but he can’t think of anything else.  
  
The gash isn’t as unsightly as it could be, a clean cut across the meat of his palm, but not terribly deep. Completely superficial. The blood beads sluggishly along the edge of it, slowly dripping down to his wrist, highlighting every crease in his flesh along the way.  
  
He doesn’t notice Arthur kneeling beside him until Arthur takes his hand delicately in both of his and methodically begins to clean the blood away with a damp cloth. The first aid kit from the medicine cabinet in the loo is lying open on the coffee table beside his neglected bowl of soup. He hadn’t even heard Arthur leave. He doesn’t know whether that says more about Arthur’s sudden predilection for care-giving, or his own growing tendency to lose himself in any minutiae that proves itself distracting.  
  
Another moment of thought is enough to let him know that it really doesn’t matter either way.  
  
“Tell me if it hurts,” Arthur says, as he tucks the end of a cloth bandage against the inside of Douglas’s wrist and carefully wraps it over his palm.  
  
“It’s fine,” Douglas tells him, but the protestation is half-hearted at best. Even so, he doesn’t pull away.  
  
When Arthur finishes, he gives Douglas’s wrist a gentle squeeze. “Right as rain,” Arthur says, flashing him an encouraging smile. He puts everything back in the kit, arranging everything precisely as it should be before climbing back to his feet.  
  
“Have some soup and some sleep,” Arthur tells him, as he walks away. “You’ll be better before you know it.”  
  
Douglas considers the newly-cleaned room, squinting at the sunlight flooding in through the windows, and for the first time he finds himself wanting to take Arthur’s unwavering optimism for truth.  
  
He manages only a third of the bowl of soup before the nausea threatens to become actual illness, but it’s still the most substantial meal he’s had in the last fortnight. It’s over-salted and a bit cold but obviously homemade, given the uneven chopping of the vegetables floating in the broth.  In any case, it manages to take the tiniest of edges off the migraine.  
  
When he finishes, he slouches on the sofa, resting his head against the back and closing his eyes tightly. The flat is so quiet he could almost forget Arthur’s even there. Sudden, unexpected exhaustion crashes over him, and he stretches out full-length, turning his face to the back cushions and shoving a pillow over his head. Oddly, it’s more peaceful in the brightness of the sitting room than it had been in the gloom of his bedroom. It’s not long before he finds the sleep he was seeking earlier.  
  
When he wakes up hours later, there’s nothing outside but the stillness of the night and the orange haze of the streetlamp outside. Douglas sits ups and feels the warm weight of a blanket slide off his shoulders and pool at his waist. The headache and nausea have dissipated, replaced by something more….  
  
He’s not sure how to describe it. More melancholic, perhaps. A weight, thick and undefined, where before there was only hollowness. He’s not sure if it’s progress, but it’s something.  
  
His search for Arthur is a quick one—the boy ( _man_ , he corrects himself), is sitting on the floor with his back to the sofa, head tilted at an awkward angle near where Douglas’s shoulder was, dead to the world. One of the previously-shelved photo albums is spread across his lap, open to a picture of Douglas sitting in an armchair, fast asleep as his newborn daughter nestles on his chest.  
  
Douglas examines the picture for a moment, waiting for the spear through his heart that comes with thoughts of the family he once had. But nothing happens. Instead of the heartbreak he expected, there’s a dim warmth in his chest, like the last glowing ember of a fire that burned itself out long ago.  
  
Arthur shifts a bit and snuffles in his sleep as Douglas stands up, barely suppressing a groan at the stiffness in his joints. He pads through to the kitchen, stopping to drape his blanket gently over Arthur, and sets the kettle boiling, making as little noise as possible as he rummages through the cabinets in search of tea.  
  
He takes his mug back to the chair in the sitting room, sipping gently and watching Arthur sleep in silent contemplation. He’s not sure what he’s done to earn the loyalty of such a man, or that there’s anything he could ever do to deserve it. It’s a puzzle that engages him until the first tendrils of dawn creep over the windowsill. Douglas has lived a life trying to earn love, and here it is, free for the taking without him having to lift a finger. It’s unfathomable, this gift of Arthur Shappey’s—absolutely astounding. And Douglas doesn’t have the first clue what to do with it.  
  
In the end, he decides not to do anything at all. It’s fragile, this gift, and while he may be disgustingly clever, his quick wit and charm have never brought him the kind of contented peace he’s always wanted. This needs to be handled with a certain amount of care and an easy touch. Strange that it should rely on Arthur of all people for such tender deftness, but Douglas doesn’t think he has it in him to endure anymore breaking by his own hands.  
  
Taking has been what’s brought him to pieces, has been what’s left him alone and unraveling. Taking has never done anything but leave him feeling carved out and aching.  
  
The fact that he has no idea how to fix any of that is devastating.  
  
 _One day at a time_ , he thinks. Part of him rebels with a sneer merely on principle. The admission is a weakness, a sign he’s losing ground. But what ground does he have left?  
  
There are two options open to him: continue as he is, chasing oblivion at the bottom of a bottle as what little remains of his life crumbles down around him or sober up—admit all of his glaring failures and move on. He knows exactly how well one of those choices has worked out thus far. After all, insanity, by definition, is doing the same again and again, yet expecting the different results.   
  
Perhaps, it’s simply time for a change in tactics.  
  
It’s not as though he has anything left to lose.  
  
Arthur snuffles again in his sleep as the first fringes of morning light slant across his face. Sluggishly, he turns away, burrowing against the edge of the sofa cushion.  
  
The entirety of Douglas’s life has been comprised of squandered second chances, more than any one man should have ever had the right to, and he’s let every last one of them slip away. No, he reconsiders as he watches Arthur sprawl out like a child. He has everything to lose.  
  
Time for a new beginning, then. A fresh start and a clean slate. No more taking the chances he’s been given as though he were entitled to them. The prospect alone is daunting.  
  
 _One day at a time_ , he tells himself until slowly, the instilled derision bleeds from the words. _One day at a time_.  
  
  



End file.
